This chart shows the growth of real income growth (y axis) against percentile of global income distribution. While the middle classes of emerging markets have seen enormous gains in the past generation, Western middle class incomes, including the US, have significantly stagnated in comparison.

Americans have 40% less net worth than before the recession, dropping from a median $135,700 in 2007 to $81,400. White households lost 26% of their net worth. Black households fared much worse, with their median net worth dropping 43%, while the median Hispanic-American household’s worth dropped 42%.

Graduates across all majors have similar loan amounts after graduation However, payment is a heavier burden for students who graduate with degrees in arts, sports, or humanities. After graduation, salaries increase by an average of 65% in the first five years. However, non-career-oriented degrees start at much lower wages (x axis in the chart above) and thus pay a significantly higher percentage of their income in loan payments.

The United States has the highest income inequality among comparable nations.Theleft-sidegraphdepicts the USashavingafavorableGinicoefficient (a measure of income inequality)without taxes. After taxesandgovernmenttransfersarefactored in,theUS becomes highly unequal.Oneofthereasonsforthistrendisthat,althoughthe US usesprogressivetaxation,thetax ratesare significantlylowerthantheinternationalstandard and social welfare programs are also much less generous.

Wealthy high school graduates make similar incomes to poor college graduates. Nearly the same amount of rich dropouts stay in the top income quintile as poor graduates stay in the bottom (14% vs. 16%). Cumulative advantage (or disadvantage) is still noticeably present for the wealthy, even those who academically strive the least.

Educational mobility is quite low in the US, where the majority of people attain the same level of education as their parents, or worse. In other words, most people from uneducated families stay that way and vice versa.

Half of Americans under age 35 have a net worth of $10,400 or less, compared to average $81,200 for all families. Strikingly, Americans with a college degree have a median wealth $167,000 higher than those with only a high school diploma.

The likelihood of gentrification is dependent on many variables, but one major indicator is racial composition. The likelihood of a neighborhood drops dramatically if more then 40% of the neighborhood is black. Likewise, neighborhoods with fewer than 35% white residents were significantly less likely to have gentrified between 1996 and 2009. Gentrification, it seems, can reinforce old borders of inequality.

American median household wealth has declined 20% since 1984, in 2013 dollars. While the 75 percentile and higher gained wealth since then, the majority of Americans lost money over those thirty years. As a striking example, the median wealth fell from $87,992 in 2003 to $56,335 today.